Heritage Leadership Interviews

Hello! I thought I would make a space that we could jot ideas and ask questions regarding our leadership interview assignment. I haven’t figured out exactly who I will interview but I thought it would be neat if we all asked the question- How do you define what Heritage Leadership is? This information could later be used for our group dissertation. Are there other questions we may all want to ask?
Also, we could ask if they would be willing to be a guest at class sometime, it would be neat to hear other leaders in the field perspectives.
Feel free to keep the dialogue going 🙂

Thanks Amy for posting this blog start. The other questions that came up was tools to use when interviewing. I am going to start another blog about instruments for research.
I have some questions which I will also be posting later. Just want to refine them.

Thanks, Amy! This is a terrific idea. I was thinking I’d have something to get the ideas started. We’re starting to be comfortable with what a Heritage Leader is, but at this point, it’s not a well-known term. I have a few of the handouts Dr. Coble had available at the Wintercession, so I was going to use this as my starting point:

“Heritage encompasses natural and cultural heritage. Heritage leaders help audiences share personal experiences, explore patterns and linkages, and examine underlying mechanisms. For many heritage leaders, facilitating dialogue and civic engagement is essential to addressing the pressing issues of our times. Heritage leaders work as interpreters, educators, administrators, and advocates in museums, national parks, refuges, schools, historic landmarks, and nonprofits. Through heritage leadership, we can sustain, pluralize, and enliven heritage.”

All – here is a link to my effort to capture class interaction with Secretary Jewell, as she joined our class on March 22. Thanks again to Curlinda for facilitating her attendance. Listening again, it was a real honor to hear from the Secretary.

And for the short version, here is her response when Joshua asked her to define a Heritage Leader:

The following is a transcription of Secretary Jewell’s response, to the best of my ability.

“Ok, great. Thanks. That’s a great question – thanks for the definition. What I think our country needs to do is stop and listen to each other. And, umm, one thing that really came into sharp focus in this job for me is that if you surround yourself with people that think like you, all you’re going to get is more of what you already know. If you make an effort to reach out and learn othe,r uhh, people’s perspective, it can completely change the way you look at a circumstance. And so, I guess I would define Heritage Leadership as listening with an open mind, to ensure that you understand uhh different perspectives of perhaps the same situation. So I’ll give you an example. Here I am at Navajo National Monument. Umm, this is a place that was explored by white archaeologists. There were many artifacts that were excavated that are now in museums. But umm, what I would say is, that in retrospect, listening to the Tribes of the area, whether it is the Navajo Nation on which this sits, or the Hopi Nation and other ancient pueblo cultures, who were in these places and built these structures, have we listened to their heritage and the importance of these sites and interpreted that in a way that honors their traditions, and the fact that not only are they still here, but many of the spiritual traditions, cultural traditions and heritage have continued unabated really since time immemorial, and certainly since the time when these places were there. As I’ve gone around the country to different national parks service sites, and when with my husband went through, the beginning of our journey we started in the south, and we went to the brand new Reconstruction Era Monument, and we went to the Birmingham civil rights national monument, and then we went to the Freedom Riders National Monument, and then we drove the Selma to Montgomery Trail and stopped in at several of the historic sites and as I read the materials that I grew up with, or that are out there in the narrative plane, there is so much that is missing because the people that wrote those narratives did not engage with those who had a direct connection to the events, or they didn’t engage them enough. So, I think we are entering an era where we need to create opportunities for people to listen more to each other. We’re entering an era where, and I wrote a secretarial order on this toward the end of last year, that engages tribal communities more deeply in oversight of public lands and we have some good examples of that. The Atna community in Alaska is helping to manage the Fish and Wildlife Service land and Park Service land and the animals on those landscapes that are so critical to their subsistence. We doing the same on the Yukon Delta. We’re doing that in Chickasaw National Recreation Area with the Park Service. And Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge is another one with the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. So, that’s about heritage leadership. It’s about having people whose heritage your interpreting writing that history and writing that heritage without having it interpreted through the eyes of an expert, an historian, an archaeologist, that don’t necessarily understand the broader perspective of these places that represent the heritage of this nation. So, those are just a few thoughts on a topic that I haven’t heard about before but certainly I have been living in the past four years.”